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Cinnamon Pass Trail - 12,640 ft

Friday, August 13 th, 2004By Jim Davis Today’s Syncronauts were ready for a great Friday-the-13 th! The beginning of this trail from Lake Molas is the same as the Engineer Pass Trail up through the Animas Forks area, but then, just as the 4-wheeling begins, the trails diverge. Cinnamon was reported to be a bit easier than Engineer, but more challenging than Ophir. Knowing Cinnamon wasn’t expected to be too challenging we linger over a casual breakfast and get a leisurely start at the day’s 4-wheeling. Today’s roster included:

We traveled north on US Highway 550 about 5 miles to Silverton and headed right through. Then on through Silverton on Colorado Rout 110 following along the course of the Animas River. As the pavement ends, this road turns into county road 2 and then passes the ruins of ore mills at Howardsville, the original county seat of San Juan County. We continued along the Animas River passing more old mining remnants at Middleton and Eureka before reaching Animas Forks. Until here 4WD was certainly not needed. Animas Forks has several interesting old building and ruins to see and explore. Also, there’s a roadside outhouse here. Due to today’s leisurely start, we make our “potty break” here at nearly 10:00AM. Here near Animas Forks a couple people aired down their tires a bit to make the 4-wheeling ride a bit softer and allow the tires a bit better grip. From here, the trail begins a with a steep switchback right off the main 2WD road. The switchback looked so tight, we weren’t sure if we could make it without backing up. Our concerns were for naught, and we motored smoothly right up and around it. The Cinnamon Pass trail continued to be rather steep and provided a little strain for out little engines, but there weren’t any obstacle challenging enough to need to get out of the vans to survey. After the climbing, the ascent gets a little more gradual as we make our way up across a broad slope of alpine tundra and to the summit of the Cinnamon Pass Trail at an elevation of 12,640 feet. Weather at the pass was a little breezy with a few “swooshie” white clouds here and there, and about 68˚F. The descent down the other side is a bit more challenging though. There are a few more switchbacks and several places had pretty large rocks to negotiate too. After about a half dozen switchbacks our group found itself at the bottom of American Basin, where the trail to the left continues on to Lake City and to the right, up into American Basin. The 4-wheeling on this trip I’d classify as “mild” from Animas Forks to Cinnamon Pass and “Mild-to-Moderate” from the pass down to the American Basin junction. This is on a “Easy – Mild – Moderate – Difficult – Extreme” Scale. Up into American Basin and back to the junction is definitely “Easy”. We traveled up into the beautiful high altitude alpine meadow that is American Basin and what a sight to see. This is a “Don’t Miss” spot in the San Juans. At a nice pull-out we pull over and take our lunch break. Ahh, I really do enjoy lunch on a big flat rock with a bunch of Syncronauts! Keeping with today’s slow cadence, we linger over lunch a while, enjoying each other’s company and the beautiful scenery. Eventually, it’s time to make a bit more progress up the basin and see what else it hold’s for us. Expecting the road to end soon, we stop at another turn-out and get out to check out the wildflowers. American Basin is know for millions (billions?) of Columbine flowers blooming in mid-summer. Although, we were late to catch them mid-season, many late bloomers still lingered and along with other wildflowers, provided a beautiful display of colors on the meadow’s green backdrop. It’s decided there’s still more worthwhile road ahead, and so we continue up the basin a bit further and enjoy the scenery a bit more, this time aided by the beauty of the creek running through the middle of the meadow, which is the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River. This is certainly a place I’d like to spend more time, but the day’s drawing long and we have to head back toward Camp Syncro. After another flower stop, we head back out of the basin toward Cinnamon Pass about 1:15PM and we each Animas Forks and the end of the 4-wheeling about an hour later. Some explored the remains of the town there a bit and then head back toward Silverton. On the way, I get our group to pull over to explore a side-canyon. I was certain I saw a waterfall in the side canyon on the way up. We park and walk into the cool rocky canyon a bit, stepping back & forth over the stream as we go. We check out a small mine tunnel there, but couldn’t find the waterfall, and the whole canyon floor is occupied by the stream now. We couldn’t even hear a waterfall, so I figured I must have been mistaken about seeing it earlier. As we drive away, I look back over my shoulder and sure enough, there is a waterfall a bit further up the canyon, not far from where we’d turned back. Why we couldn’t hear it, I don’t know, but it is visible from the road through the narrowest of sight angles. I’m naming it “ Hidden Falls”! All in all, a great day to be at Syncro Safari!

Here’s some trail information from published trail guides with comments before Syncro Safari: